GENRE CONFUSION

The genre lists these days on music internet sites have
grown to bewildering proportions. It's become the 'hip' thing to reclassify
every new band hitting the market with their own unique genre; witness
Korn's birth of the emo classification. While this may serve to give your
music it's own niche out there on the internet, the overall result from
the explosion of musical genres is confusion and malaise in internet users.
It's no longer possible for a fan of rock music to simply search for songs
in the rock genre; now they must choose between hard rock, indie rock,
alternative rock, punk rock, emo rock, goth rock...the list goes on and
on. Add to that the fact that more and more artists are adding their music
out there for download, and you've got millions of tracks in hundreds of
genres; too many for even the most dedicated web surfer with the fastest
connection in the world to listen to them all. So how should you classify
your music to get the most attention from your audience?

The problems of choosing a proper genre classification
for your music is not one limited to independent artists; every artist
faces this problem today. New genre classifications are poorly defined
at best, and even the major players in the music industry seem to have
forgotten the old tried and true definitions of 'classic' genres such as
rock or dance. There was a day when genre classification had some basis
in musical reality. Differences between rock, hard rock, metal, and industrial
were defined by the tempo of the music, the choice of instrumentation,
and the style of production. Genre classification seems these days to be
driven by audience perceptions of music. In other words, it's your listeners
who decide whether you're 'heavy' enough to be called hard rock or 'grunge'
enough to be called garage. And here's where we get to the heart of the
problem.

Depending on where you're at, a group like AC/DC can
go from being classified as simple rock to hard rock to metal. Think I'm
wrong? Ask a 'rock' fan in the Northern U.S. what rock is, then ask someone
from the Southern states. You'll get two different answers. It gets even
worse when you widen your search to the world. I've found UK sites listing
Elton John as hard rock and German sites listing Rammstein as just rock.
This makes it difficult for you as an independent artist to get your music
out to the people who might like it, especially when you're up against
the majors who throw money around advertising their artists everywhere.

Research is one way to overcome this problem. You must
develop an understanding of how each country or region would classify your
music in order to effectively reach your audience. Your advertising pitch
should be modified for every new country to best fit their expectations.
The easiest way to do this is to pick one well-known band or artist that
you think your music is similar to. Then search that band or artist out
on every music site you can find. If you think you might sound similar
to Marilyn Manson, check to see what genres he's listed under in various
countries. You may find a need to advertise your music as hard rock or
metal in France but pop rock in Germany. This is particularly important
in getting reviews in other countries. A reviewer in France expecting a
hard rock release may be shocked and disappointed when he/she thinks you
belong in metal or pop rock.